vegan rice cooker mac n cheeze

Another rice cooker recipe is here!

I love pasta, but, admittedly, it took me a lot of attempts to finally find a rice cooker pasta method that I liked. The first attempt was a dry bland mush. The second was slightly better and less overcooked but still much too dry. I tried again and again, and I am happy to say that a palatable rice cooker pasta method is finally here. And now it is my time to share.

I will say, however, there is one small downside to rice cooker pasta. The pasta, rather than having that deliciously smooth shine on every piece is coated with a thin layer of starch that normally would disperse throughout the large pot of water when cooking it on the stovetop.

My solution? A sauce that’s made tastier by that starchy coating!

With some traditional methods, macaroni and cheese would be made starting with a roux, of butter and flour, and then milk would be added and left to simmer, with frequent mixing, until a sauce of desired consistency was reached. After this, cheese, noodles, and whatever else would be added to finish off the dish. When I normally make mac n cheeze (with access to a stove and more ingredients), I usually roughly follow this method (with vegan ingredients of course), but, in my dorm room with only a rice cooker and a microwave, I had to get a little more creative. It occurred to me that the starch on the pasta could, in some capacity, thicken the sauce like the flour in a roux, so I simply skipped the flour, added the plant milk, and my final cheeze sauce came out just fine! No weird starchiness (as was the case with other sauces) and a sauce consistency almost identical to one made with flour. My mac n cheeze was a success!!
Now that I’ve finished rambling about cultural food norms and cooking pseudoscience, here’s the recipe:

Vegan Rice-cooker Mac n Cheeze:

(By the way, here’s a video of this recipe if you haven’t already seen it)